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Saturday, February 21, 2015

Myths Dominate our Lives -- to the Detriment of Rational Behavior

I can't be too tough on those defending Israel. I understand where they are coming from. Latent anti-jewish anti-semitism infects Christians, Muslims, even some secular Jews. When the Rabbis warned the Zionist movement of the dangers of re-creating a Jewish State in the historic Boundaries of Israel and they warned of them "waking up sleeping demons" [“mazikin,” literally -- “damagers.”] the expression was a metaphor but it expresses a reality. In their view secular Jews who were also non-believers would stir up trouble by breaking the law of Torah.

But some of them also understood this in it's metaphorical figurative sense. Social conflict is built on poisonous images and their related feelings and imperatives. And Jews defending their secular rights in a highly religious Muslim context would be awakening Christian and Muslim prejudices against those who are "heretical" and that would stir up these archetypical and religious demons. And of course for some of the Hasidim Zionism represented a resurrection of the Somewhat secular Zionism of Shabbetai Tzvi who was willing to nominally convert to Islam in order to get the Turks to let his people move back to Israel in the 1600s. Tzionism woke up Haredi Mazakim too. And with the rise of religious ultranationalism this has shown itself to be as damaging as that of the Christians and Muslims. The dueling and mutually fueling Archetypes of the three religions burn like poisons in the middle east now. And the heat from them is ignoring fires across the world. The Rabbis were afraid of something inevitable. Jews were in Palestine since long before Shabbetai Tsvi and this dream was bound to have people make it true. And with the dreams come the nightmares. Mazakim are the damaging images we carry around in our hearts. They manifest in irrational behavior and in dreams. {http://vbm-torah.org/archive/taggada/14taggada.htm}

Poisoned Archetypes

Our feelings represent archetypes derived from myths and legends and sometimes our own actual personal history. These feelings are manipulated by Social Dominators, but they are like the Mazikin the Rabbis mention. They damage our ability to deal with each other humanely and rationally. In Social Dominance theory the myths are called "Hierarchy Enhancing" myths, but the psychology of them is more Jungian than anything else. Archetypes dominate our thinking consciously or unconsciously even if we don't go along with the Dominators who use them destructively to freeboot their way into fame and fortune.

And it's all over the place. Not just in the Israeli/Palestinian conflict or the anti-semitism aroused by it. It's even in conflicts seemingly totally unrelated. For some Russophiles the conflict in Ukraine is seen as a war of modern day "conquistadors" -- the same myths recycled for a new purpose. And it's not just old myths; the "Capitalist"/"Worker" conflicts are seen through mythic lenses. Our earlier Socialists/Bolsheviks especially and Fascists alike, invented new myths. Instead of dealing with our myths we keep adding new layers. So Darwinism becomes "Social Darwinism" and when Christians recoil against Social Darwinism, the clever Social Darwinians deflect their repulsion to the theory of Evolution.

Thus all these are dueling myths. And the avatars of these dueling myths are figuratively "Mazikim" -- who haunt people's sleep. I'm calling them Poisoned Archtypes. They pop out of our unconscious in visceral reactions to seemingly innocent phenomena. That evoke archetypes.

This archetype gets resurrected again and again. Sometimes when someone is doing business with Jewish businessmen, sometimes in personal relationships. It is, figuratively, a "Mazikim" and it is a very real personal prejudice in a "recognition pattern" that even the most enlightened carry around in them as a cultural heritage. Sometimes it transfers to other ethnicities, such as Scots. If it were the only archetype poisoning world relations it might not be so bad. But it's not.

Zionism and Social Dominance

I started an article on this subject before seeing Tucker Carlson's Gaffe. I was raised a Christian and was Born Again for a while. I learned and ingested all the myths from the New Testament to preachings of charlatans including Martin Luther and Calvin. I know that the existence of Israel incites the minds of Christians in ways that are haunted with echoes of Roman atrocities, the destruction of the Second Temple, the Byzantines and their long war with the Arabs and then the Turks. All that haunts the three great religions with myths and legends, prejudices and visceral hates. It distorts the psyche and destroys generations of lives with conflict and war.

And the Poison is just beneath the surface

TPM reports an incident with Tucker Carlson and his daily caller:

The article, written by Maj. Gen. Jerry R. Curry, a retired US Army veteran and former assistant to the Ford, Carter, Reagan and Bush administrations, argued that Muslim terrorists targeting Jews will soon turn to other groups such as Christians, “just as the Nazis did” during World War II.

So the Nazis have become a mythic group with mythic leaders, mythic powers and a set of lessons that justify Blitzkreig against nasty dictators or they will kill millions.

“If today the civilized world, led by the United States, doesn’t stand up and speak out for Israel and the world’s Jews, when Islam comes for the Christians, and it will come, there will be no one left to speak for them,” Curry wrote.

Islam is about a Trillion people. But Catholics alone are another Trillion. So this is more the expression of Curry's personal demons than any rational fear. Mazakim.

But what made the article crazy was the original headline:

"A glaring headline which read, “Kill All The Jews And When That Is Done Kill Those That Refused To Defend Them,” was published on Tuesday.

If a man commits murder being drunk doesn't excuse him. Why? Because a drunk man does what he is thinking of doing but wouldn't do sober. Which means that whatever the excuses the intentionality is revealed! Whether they meant it consciously or unconsciously the images of Auschwitz, the Inquisition and the Jews killed in the crusades by our "Christian" European Ancestors haunt Curry and the rest of us.

"Curry’s article has since been given a different headline and a note was added beneath it: “Correction: The original headline on this op-ed was wildly inarticulate and perverted the meaning of the piece. We apologize.”

Those arrows were loosed because of the "mazakim" that reside in anti-semitic and Western Hero myths. The image of the victims of Auschwitz have become their own "Mazakim" in the consciousnesses of those of us who live with them. We can either heal from events or let them damage us. But they play into other, newer (more or less) myths. Such as this from Curry's article:

"Now in the Middle East Muslim nations like Iran are publicly saying they want to kill every Jew on the face of the earth. So why shouldn’t the Jews want to sit down and negotiate they ask. Hitler and the Nazis, with the quiescence of the League of Nations, were leading a word wide assault not just on the Jews but also on the world’s Christians, like cleric Niemoeller. Today Muslims, with the quiescence of the United Nations, are leading an assault on the world’s liberty and freedom just as the Nazis did, and again no one is protesting."

Of course is that what they are really saying, or are they expressing their own poisoned Archetypes. Israel has Atomic Bombs. It treats the rebellious among it's own Muslim minorities like dirt sometimes. The fear of even negotiating with Iran represents the fear that the Iranians will just see negotiation as weakness. It's also could be an expression of irrational fears that exaggerate the danger from the Iranians and the risk of the Iranians getting the bomb. Would they really destroy Israel? Do the Shia really plan homicide? I don't think so. They want Israel to end as a country because it stirs up their own Mazakim.

And the images of the Holocaust and a great weight of past conflict and history weigh on Europeans who take up the Palestinian cause and on Muslims and Palestinians. It gets in the way of rational thinking. Because of dealing with real people we are like Don Quixote on ergot and seeing our "Mazakim" stereotypes/archetypes instead of the people we are talking to. This will only get worse unless people start educating themselves again and THINKING. The Mazakim are our internal demons. They aren't Gods.

The Mazakim in myth are related to the Daughters of Lilith. Mythically, they are related to the Japanese Kishimojin and her children and the Buddhist Goddess Hariti. So the archetype is common around the world. Both Lilith and Kishimojin were spiritual vampires. And their children are spiritual entities that haunt dreams. They are like the two wolves in the North American indigenous tale. "We all have two wolves; one vicious and the other kind. The one who wins is the one we feed. So Rabbis who take this too literally are afraid of ancient pagan demon Gods. Who manifest as Jungian Archetypes.